In cellular communication networks intra-cell and inter-cell interference limits the achievable data throughput. Intra-cell interference can occur among multiple terminals served in the same cell. Inter-cell interference, on the other hand, denotes interference among two or more cells. Inter-cell interference is often experienced by terminals at cell edges.
In order to increase the cell throughput, for example at a cell edge, terminals may apply interference cancellation techniques. Interference cancellation techniques target at cancelling the interference from a received signal and are implemented in the form of one or multiple interference cancellation stages. After the interference has been cancelled from the received signal, the remaining signal actually destined to the terminal (“desired signal”) can be efficiently processed downstream of the interference cancellation stage(s). Such processing typically includes decoding operations.
It is evident that the quality of the decoding result strongly depends on the efficiency of interference cancellation. Efficient interference cancellation results in a higher decoding quality, which means that signals at lower signal levels (e.g., at cell edges) can still be successfully decoded.